I'm tired of hearing about MMPOG's

#1 I tend to agree with that. Everyone (sweeping generalisation I know, forgive me) is making an MMORPG. They're all trying to jump on a bandwagon that is rapidly pulling away. The more people that develop an MMORPG, the more diluted the market for players gets. Unlike the "offline" games (Q3, UT, etc etc), people tend not to play/be members of several different games.
This next year or so will be full of MMORPGs. Some will succeed, lots will fail. Cue lots of rants in the gaming press about "why is everything an MMORPG these days?" and "What happened to all the single-player games?" and the single-player market will open up again. I hope :)

#2 If it is any consolation, the title I am currently developing is first, and foremost, a single player game.

#3 Nothing is like human interaction, every game that can be multiplayer should be.
I also am tired of this MMORPG stuff, I say stick with a game that has a good single player status and enhance it with multiplayer capability, and have that free.

Does anyone think that garagegames has too many forum areas for their own good?
I mean, who is going to check ALL those forums to help people? Someone who might have the fix to the question but doesn't specialize in that topic won't have a chance to even see that post.
Is there a really good thing about this I'm not seeing?

I like it where there are fewer topics, mixed together, like...
Programming, Discussion, Suggestions, and maybe add on a few business or whatever...

#4 Chris, click on My Garage (next to Developer News and Marketplace)

Then near the bottom there's a Forum section. Look for the line that says "New posts have been made to x threads since you last marked items as read". Click on "threads" and you'll get all the new posts. Once you've read them all or read all the ones you care about, click "Mark all as Read (x)".

#5 I try my best to keep up with all of the forums and to answer any questions I know the answer to or can find an answer for the ones I don't. I have spent a lot of time on these forums since Feb and have a good memory for what has been covered in old posts so I try to point people in the right direction whenever I can. I can't always keep up b/c my life gets busy from time to time (hehe understatement of the year =). GG is assembling a group of volunteers to help support the V12 engine when it comes out and I am among them. As soon as I lay hands on the source code, I plan to study it very hard so that I can help to support it.

#6 It seems everyman and his dog wants to do a mmpog (including me). Im a huge fan of virtual worlds, Ive read alot of cyberpunk type books and played most of the mmpogs out there. I simply cannot play a single player game anymore unless its upto par with Halflife or Thief.
It is the future of gaming, Of course single player will always be around, but with things like the xbox and faster pcs/broadband. MMPOG's are the way of the future. Alof of people will disagree, but from my experience its alot more fun adventuring with a group of other players then by yourself.
There are too many mmpog's in development that are just clones of existing games. These will fail, the games with the inovation that takes player interaction to the next level will draw the players. Its an exciting area and time to be in game development.

#7 I have to agree with Brendan... I think Massively Multiplayer is definitely the wave of the future. Just as the first 3D games like Quake basically *created* an entire methodology for how games work, I think MM will be the next new methodology. We're already seeing how game evolution has taken 3d and incorporated it into many many non-FPS games... everything from simulations to RTS to whatever... Right now, MM is being pioneered mostly by the big boys with the big money and therefore we get watered down clones of existing games tweaked to allow lots of people to run around. I have a feeling, though, that the innovative designers will start coming out of the woodwork soon and show off some totally fresh ideas that will turn MM back around into another genre. As is, paper&dice RPGs are already seeing a comeback in virtual form (see Black Isle Studios' recent successes)... it's only a matter of time before elements from innovative games like Black&White combine with RPGs, the emerging peer-to-peer software paradigm, and the MM paradigm...

...and there ARE ways to make MM without subscription-based... my team is making a totally free one now, but that doesn't mean we won't make it commercial... we're just going to find some new ways to make the money...

-raz
www.nebula2o.com

#8 Just a small reality check to those who think MMORPGs shouldn't charge subscriptions.

In a speech given by one of the heads of Turbine Entertainment (makers of Asheron's Call), they explained that bandwidth alone cost in excess of 2$ per month per person. That's not even to mention the tech support, guides, maintenance, upgrades, new quests and features that have to be paid for.

MMORPGs are unbelievably expensive to develop and maintain. What people forget is that your typical multiplayer server (or MUD) will NOT scale at all to the capacity needed for the thousands of simultaneous users. The scope is simply enormous. Imagine taking a top web site with millions of hits a day, combine their underlying server / database infrastructure with an enormously complex and detailed video game, toss in a huge number of tools to create and manage the world, hundreds of square miles of terrain and architecture, hundreds of enemies, items, and powers, all that have to be balanced and playtested, tools to manage user accounts and access privileges, add in the community management, support, and policymaking that are such a necessity, and you get a game that costs upwards $10 million to make and takes 5 years. All these costs need to be recouped, and they sure as hell won't be by the sales of boxes alone.

That said, for the few companies that have been able to put forth the initial investment, there is a lot of money to be made in the long term if you can get close to a hundred thousand users (at 10$ a month, that's $12 million a year).

Right now, though, I wouldn't even think about putting out an MMORPG, not with Star Wars: Galaxies on the horizion. EA canned Ultima Online: 2 because they don't think they can handle the competition. Say what you will about EA, but they're not the largest interactive entertainment software company because they have poor business sense.

#9 How much bandwidth do you think you need for a multiplayer server? (Bandwidth per user, etc.)
A T1 is about $1200 a month (how many players can you have with a T1?).

#10 Yeah I hate them. I was a beta tester on Ultima Online
years ago and it was boring. I hated having to mine for gold. I hated clicking on posts to train my character.
I hated the constant crashes and the lag. I hated
the PKers. I hated the fact that I couldn't go on
adventures or meet any monsters. Whenever I left town
all the monters were dead and people with stronger
charcters would kill you off.

#11 Chris,

If you assume a 28.8K connection per client (that's minimum), that is aproximately 2,880 bytes/sec. A T1 is 1.5 Megabits/sec ~= 187,500 bytes/sec. Thus you could (theoretically) have 65 players on a T1.

Just to give you a 'scope' of MMORPGs. In beta, EverQuest had half of an OC3 connection (I think, it might have been several T3s), in the first few weeks of release they purchased an entire OC3, newly installed. That's a LOT of data. (OC3 155.5 Mbps ~= 6700 users)

--Bryan

#12 WEll you guys stated your opinion. well good great. Now it's time for mine. My what? my OPINION. sorry if i'm sounding rude i'm just getting tired of this. YOu like single player games. woopdi doo. I like MMOG's. It's all a matter in opinion. For me i like an everchanging world with constant people to talk to. Single player games are... I wouldn't say linear, i just can't think of a word for it. The only time it changes is when someone comes out with a mod for it. What about Tribes 2? Do you guys not like that casue it's basically multiplayer only? I have recently purchased and everquest account and I don't regret one dime of it. I"ve had fun with it and apparently do the 300k other users who play. Yeah i've met a few other people who don't like it but that's their opinion and I don't mind it. The only thing i mind is when this happens and people state their harsh regret to people who like the games. I agree that MMOG's aren't the future, as some people will always love single player only games, but the fact of the matter is to not knock people down. Yes there will be a lot of MMOG's (imho) that will fail because of not enough player support IF they don't do it right. AS long as they don't increase their bandwidth faster than their player base increases it won't fail. Guess what my MMORPG is starting out as. ON a freakin DSL that is reported to download at 50kilobytes MAX!! And that should be able to hold enough people for a while. Then again i'm making one for fun but that's besides the point.

Anyways I don't hate anyone for their opinions but when they nag people about how their right and we're wrong, it pisses me off! Anyways..

p.s. i agree about UO that's why i played on Player run pure roleplyaing shards and it was great.

#13 >The only time it changes is when someone comes out with a mod for it.

I am in the process of gathering resources with other developers for a revolutionary RPG, both in scale, story, size, scope, and anything else possible. Its based on an idea I started over a year ago. I am going to try and make it continue across multiple games, and possibly even downloadable story updates or other things to make it interesting. The game story and theme is truely fantastic.

Why buy a T1 at 1.5 megabits when you can have a cable modem for $50 a month at 2 megabits(250KB per sec) or a 1.5 megabit DSL? I probably already know the answers to that...

I have no problems with multiplayer or single player games, I enjoy single player games more currently, but multiplayer ones are fun as well, neither is *better*.

#14 Well t1's are not for home personal use (unless your rich as hell) cause they are like a couple thousand per month or something like that. for personal use you go to DSL.

#15 First Post :)

But the reason a DSL or Cable connection is 40-50 bucks is because they say you can get that speed but you can't. I'm in El Segundo, CA (right next to LA) and sometimes I get 150k/s downloads and other times I can't get over 15 on my cable. I had DSL previously and had similar probs (but not as much difference in speeds, mine varied from 80k/s max to about 30k/s min.) It's unreliable where a T1 "should" always have 1.5Mbit/s. You can't base a business plan around something like that because it will ruin it for people playing your game if it becomes incredibly lagged because everyone just got off work and is surfing the web in your neighborhood.

Unless you plan to run it out of Canada where they have great cable speeds because of lack of people. :)

#16 I'm just speaking for the UK here (don't know about other countries), but DSL is crap. It's always slower then the state speed. Stating 2mbps is just dsome sort of sick joke, the line is shared by everyone who signed up for DSL in your area, making for slow, and unpredictable speeds.

Also, DSL has a fixed split betwen upload and download, I think the upload goes at 56k MAX. No way can you host a MMPOG using 56k of bandwidth. Well u can, but it depends on your definition of multi.

#17 There are some major differences between DSL and T1 even totally aside from bandwidth, like reliability and support. There are even more significant differences between T1 and OC3. When you're running an MMORPG, you can't afford to have the system go down. Ever. (they still do, but that's not the point). You need to be able to handle thousands of simultaneous connections. Lag has to be minimal, not a mean feat when you have to process thousands of clients. And if something goes wrong, you had better have support on staff 24 hours to fix whatever broke.

But these changes aren't limited to the connection side. When you start dealing with thousands of simultaneous clients, welcome to the arcane world of RAID, distributed computing, load-balancing and SMP.

On the content side, you have thousands of square miles of terrain, hundreds of abilities and items all that need to be tested and balanced, scores of models, enemy types, animations, thousands of lines of text that need to be edited, all which needs to be bug free AND look good. And you had better believe you'll need the equivalent thousands of testers to even have a hope of making sure it all works properly.

My main point is that normal game architecture simply does not scale to the size needed for an MMORPG. A game has to be designed from ground up to be a MMORPG, and I suspect no one here has the time nor the money to do so.

I encourage everyone of talent to devote their time to more achievable projects. I'd much rather see a few dozen small but polished and enjoyable games than a half-baked, never-finished mess of a MMORPG.

#18 Even if someone does manage to finish one, you need money. If you are that rich that you can finance everything yourself then great, but I wouldn't expect to be able to use a subscription fee to cover all of your costs.

First problem is getting people to know that your game exists, lots of people. Advertising will be required, even if it's cheap, it's not free.

Next you have to convince the people who have noticed your game, that they want to buy it, and pay a subscription for it. Think about it, if you saw a new MMPOG and were considering paying for it, you would want to know that there will be loads of other players, you would want to know that the company aren't just going to withdraw their servers due to lack of funds, and you want to be sure that you can get support for it. Now, I would be awfully wary of subscribing to a game that wasn't backed by a big publisher who's name I know, and I would be wondering how good it was as well, if I didn't see adverts for it plastered everywhere. There may be people who see a good game and want to get it despite the fact that it is by a new developer, but they would probably be the minority, not enough to pay your bills. If you do manage to attract enough people, then it would be through extensive promotion (loads more money).

You need to provide GOOD support for every player, they're paying monthly, and if they can't play because of problems, then they will just stop paying. If you feel you have enough players to make it work, then you need to be sure that you can support the costs needed to run your server for a long enough time. If after two months you realise that you can't afford to keep running the game, then player's will be very dissapointed after paying money, just to find that they can't play any more. It would also damage your reputation, and seriously decrease the chance of players from that game, buying another from you.

You need huge ammounts of tester. You could probably get free testers over the web, but as it is imperative that there are no bugs, then you would be best hiring some dedicated testers.

Either way, you may finish your game (with a lot of luck), but I'm betting that the costs will always be more then expected, and the users less. Mind you, if it's really good, then there is a chance (never said it was big) of getting the game taken on by a major publisher, fixing most of your worries. But still, it's a lot of investment (even if just in time) making a MMPOG, and what is going to be done with the end product needs serious thought - hopefully before starting :)

I'm not saying don't make a MMPOG though, I think that if you really think you can stick it out, and have the team, then I'm sure it would be good experience, even if nothing comes of it.

#19 Moffatt then don't play. Real easy solution. Go out buy doom or warcraft and you will be set.

#20 I think the major disagreement here is flawed from the start. There's no reason to believe that a half-dozen idealist newbie game developers can come up with another Everquest or UO. As has been pointed out already, the development costs, bandwidth costs, etc. etc. for supporting a multi-thousand person game are enormous.

HOWEVER, there is absolutely NO reason why a half dozen devoted designers couldn't PROGRAM a game like that. They just might not be able to afford the bandwidth and such to fully utilize it. But, as was also pointed out, if you get only 50-100 people on your game (pay $100/month to a local ISP to let you co-lo a box on their network and that should be plenty of bandwidth for a small beta test) and they think its the best thing since sliced bread, that puts a serious sales pitch AND a game demo in your hand, which is easily enough to sell a publisher on you, your team, and probably your game. From there, its up to the publisher to support the thousands of new players that they want to make the big bucks off of.

Frankly, the cost of a couple high-bandwidth lines is nothing compared to 2+ years worth of salaries paying a full development team to actually write a game. The big boys will likely be very happy to buy your already-made game and then throw some bandwidth behind it.

-Raz
http://www.nebula2o.com